How to Hire Maintenance Managers in Los Angeles

Current Environment

A marketing team needs a marketing manager. A retail store needs a store manager. A maintenance department needs a maintenance manager.

Whenever you have a diverse team of people that needs to be coordinated, there must be someone who has been put in charge of delegating and overseeing all of the tasks and responsibilities of each individual and the collective team as a whole. What makes a maintenance manager a bit different is that the scope of their responsibilities is somewhat larger than with your standard managerial role in that they are not just a manager of people, but must also be well-versed and skilled in many of the maintenance-related trades.

History

The second industrial revolution started the need for maintenance professionals. Historically, maintenance has been viewed as an expense, necessary but not wanted. Although some organizations may still hold this idea to be true, many companies today regard maintenance as an essential part of business operations and an area where an experienced maintenance professional can find ways to decrease costs and diminish the impact on the bottom line.

How will Recruiting maintenance managers Help Your Company?

How will Hiring maintenance managers Help Your Company?

While the exact scope of work differs depending on the size of the company, a typical maintenance manager is responsible for keeping the ground operations running by managing and overseeing all maintenance-related activities.

Hiring the right maintenance manager can and will make a significant difference when it comes to ensuring your company’s facilities are well managed and it will reduce the stress of knowing that even the smallest of details are well cared for and looked after.

The qualified maintenance manager will exert strong leadership and will work toward getting the job done properly through others. Delegating work to subordinates is an important function of management otherwise nothing ever gets done. Delegation frees up precious time so the manager can focus on high-level, high-value activities.

In being a great leader, the maintenance manager will get things done by inspiring and empowering others to do great work for them. They foster motivation by giving subordinates autonomy to do the job by creating a supportive environment, and by giving recognition when the job is done well.

In addition to showing strong leadership, the most successful maintenance managers are both flexible and humble, but still bring a high level of confidence and competence to the job.

Having a strong maintenance manager in place is a great way for a company to grow and do more with less. Successful managers who know how to motivate and encourage a team of technicians and supervisors will be the ones who can propel an organization to embrace new technologies, such as predictive maintenance tools, in an effective and productive manner.

Before we get to exactly how to hire the best maintenance manager in [city_name] let’s review some of the details…

maintenance-manager Details

Responsibilities

Maintenance managers oversee a team of maintenance supervisors who manage technicians and workload during a particular shift. Depending on the size of the organization, managers report to either a maintenance director, president, or vice president of operations.

Maintenance managers also carry out the following tasks and responsibilities:

Strategic Planning
Coordination of Responsibilities
Training and Development of Employees
Set the Team Vision
Build a Proactive Work Culture
Implement Health and Safety Procedures
Document Previous Work on Assets
Aim for Preventative Maintenance Culture
Support Supervisors and Technicians
Assign Appropriate Tasks with Trust

Looking for another position? View other positions we place in Los Angeles, California.

Education

Maintenance managers who lead maintenance departments, including managing staff, budget, purchasing, reporting, etc. will need a bachelor’s degree in business or a related discipline. This includes administrative services and facilities managers. Some roles in smaller facilities, however, may only require an associate of arts degree plus several years of on-the-job experience.

Many people enter the profession with a high school diploma and a significant amount of relevant experience. There are also several professional credentials that maintenance managers may choose to complete.

Here are resources to help you find community colleges in California, Arizona, and your own state.

Top Schools

Community Colleges in California
Community Colleges in Arizona
Search Community Colleges in Your State

2019 U.S. National Data

Salary Range

maintenance managers in the U.S.

$53k

Low

$93k

Average

$141k

High

$72k

Average CA
Salary

$34.58

Average CA
Hourly

326k

Total maintenance managers Employed in the U.S.

84.7%

Men

15.3%

Women

maintenance-manager Salary Comparison

National

As stated the role of the maintenance manager is a crucial one. As such, the role can be paid handsomely, even at the bottom salary level. More experienced leads to higher compensation and more managerial duties which leads to higher compensation.

California

The average annual salary for maintenance managers in California was 72k in 2019. The hourly wage averaged $34.58.

For more detailed compensation information for maintenance managers in Los Angeles, download our free compensation/salary report below.

Working in Los Angeles

Do maintenance managers consider the city of swimming pools and movie stars a great place to work? Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are recruiting for maintenance managers in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, California is considered by most to be a desirable place to live and work, especially for those who put an almost perfect climate on the top of their wish list. These sunshine-seeking candidates will put a high value on positions in LA and the surrounding areas in Southern California, and companies regularly entice the best candidates with the lure of beautiful beaches and Hollywood glamor.

However, the city is also known for its high cost of living and super expensive real estate. This may affect a company’s ability to recruit top candidates unless compensation is commensurate.

The Muse, a website for the next-gen workforce to research companies and careers published this list of 16 reasons to work in Los Angeles, including:

Pros

Your winter work wardrobe is exactly the same as your summer work wardrobe.
Downtown is (finally!) really, really cool.
Coffee breaks often involve a celebrity sighting.
You can ski and surf in the same day.
Amtec is available to help as a recruitment agency or staffing company for Los Angeles too.

On the other hand, there are a few common complaints about living and working in Los Angeles. In a recent exchange on Quora, the traffic and the high cost of living were the most common complaints among Angelinos.

Cons

Traffic. The Inrix 2019 Traffic Scorecard Report cited Los Angeles as the 6th most congested city in the U.S. and the 26th most congested city in the world.
High cost of living.
Housing costs, which contribute significantly to the high cost of living noted above.
Lack of good public transportation. The lack of a fully developed public transportation system in Southern California means more cars on the already congested freeways.

Los Angeles, California

Current Weather

Not your city? View other cities where we place maintenance managers.

Demand for maintenance managers in Los Angeles

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the national job outlook for maintenance managers at 6%, 2% higher than the national average for overall job growth (4%).

New ways to build and manage facilities utilizing “smart building” technology is expected to affect the work of facilities managers over the next decade. This technology will provide facilities and maintenance managers with timely and detailed information, such as equipment failure alerts and reminders to do maintenance. This information should allow facilities managers to complete their work more efficiently.

The supply of candidates and demand for open positions have a direct correlation to a company's ability to hire. Download a free Supply and Demand report for maintenance managers in Los Angeles, California below.

How to Hire the Best maintenance managers

Finding and hiring the best maintenance-manager candidates can save you money right away and well into the future.

The costs of making a bad hire are well documented. The cost can run as much as 30% of the employee's first-year earnings according to the US Department of Labor. Bad hires can cost a whopping $240,000 in expenses related to hiring, compensation, and retention per The Undercover Recruiter. 74% of companies who admit they've hired the wrong person for a position lost an average of $14,900 for each bad hire according to CareerBuilder. These statistics support our long-held position that behavioral questions are the best way to get to know your candidates and past behavior is the best indicator of future performance.

Recruiting Best Practices

The information below comes from the best practices Amtec uses for finding the highest quality candidates.

Defining the Position

When defining the role you are creating, we recommend a position profile to fully evaluate the position you are hiring for. You must decide if the engineer can work remotely or must work in California. If working in Los Angeles is essential, make sure you include that in your job posting so candidates can decide how many miles they can commute.

How to Source the Best Candidates

When you are looking to source the best quality candidates for your open positions, make sure you have done the legwork to hire an "A Player". You can do this by making sure your company's perspective is aligned with the current market, you have taken into account the job responsibilities, as well as what type of characteristics you are looking for to fit your company culture. Then proceed to write a job posting to attract high-quality candidates.

Characteristics of maintenance managers

Maintenance managers are a critical link in the organizational structure of a maintenance department. Once an organization has enough employees to warrant adding this level of management, it is important to select or groom the right type of individual for this position.

The right individuals will be well-versed not only in the technical side of maintenance but also have the right leadership and team-building skills to motivate and encourage supervisors and technicians; serving as the catalyst for an entire maintenance department to thrive and grow into the future.

For more detailed compensation information for maintenance managers in [city_name], download our free compensation/salary report below.

How to Screen Candidates

You wrote a job posting, posted the position online, and received a lot more resumes than you’d bargained for! Next comes the enormous task of sorting through those resumes to eliminate the ones that are clearly not a good fit. Now, you have a stack of resumes for candidates who have potential. So how do you go about screening the remaining candidates?

It starts on the phone! As a recruiter, the goal of your telephone screening is to learn more about your candidates. You can confirm that they have the educational qualifications and relevant experience, but you also need to determine if they would fit into your company's culture. To make this job easier, use a system to consistently evaluate results. This way you can equally and objectively compare candidates and evaluate their "soft skills", like communication and thinking process. Download Amtec's Professional Assessment Questionnaire below to help with screening candidates.

Free Professional Assessment Questionnaire

An individually customized questionnaire that helps assess a candidate's competence with written communication skills, thinking processes, and other relevant skills.

How to Interview Candidates

At Amtec, we believe in the power of behavoral interview questions to go beyond the experience and skills listed on the candidate's resume. Although you will want to confirm in the interview that the candidate does indeed have the experience listed on their resume, your assessment needs to go much deeper than that. An interview using behavioral questions can help you determine how well the candidate will fit with your company culture.

Download Amtec's best practices on conducting super effective interviews to find the best candidates and fill your open jobs.

Behavioral Interview Guide

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Free Interview Guide